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Hidden with code "Submitted as Feature" |
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News :: Urban Development |
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SDaS SchoolHouse Razed |
Current rating: 0 |
by Paul Kotheimer
Email: herringb (nospam) prairienet.org (unverified!)
Phone: 217-344-8820
Address: via UCIMC |
23 May 2004
Modified: 11:18:36 PM |
409 North Race Street in Urbana had for many years been the home of the School for Designing a Society (SDaS), a local activist project which has seeded and nurtured many, many other projects.
The building was demolished this weekend. The School continues... |
All the following sentences come from me. I am the last subletter and Participant-in-Residence of that silly-looking house at the corner of Race and University which has just recently been pushed into a hole in the ground. If you think news should be unbiased (whatever "news" is, and whatever "unbiased" is), then this is not news.
Here, however, to the best of my ability, is "the news": For several years now, local landowner Jim Burch has had a FOR SALE sign up at the corner of Race and University. The plot for sale included the property at 409 North Race, home of the School for Designing a Society (SDaS). Just south of the FOR SALE sign, a food prairie was growing: Sugar snap peas, oninons, strawberries, tomatoes.
Earlier this spring, the neighboring house was razed after a furnace failure rendered that house uninhabitable. That plot is part of the parcel of land which is for sale. Shortly after the bulldozers appeared at the Big Blue House and tore it down, along with the apple tree in the sideyard, the news came:
SDaS received notice of their imminent eviction and of the demolition of the 409 Race Street house. Since receiving that notice, friends and participants in the SDaS project have been working to reclaim the considerable work they have put in to the structure. SDaS and the landowner, according to most reports, part ways on amicable terms.
Since the notice of demolition came, SDaS designers and friends have done their best to find new homes for dozens of strawberry plants. All the plants have found new plots to grow in and are now bearing green fruits which will ripen within the month.
Two weeks ago, SDaS hosted a clearinghouse sale and "Freecyle" event at which everything from furniture to flagstones to firewood were available for the taking, or for a small donation. Many items made their way out of a landfill future and into use and usefulness. The Economy (capital E) may have been, in a small way, redesigned by this event.
I myself (Remember me? I'm the person who is writing this article...) took home a number of souvenirs which I hope will serve as historical place-markers: For a number of years, the north side of the SchoolHouse porch bore a sign, hand-painted in foot-tall green letters. I had the pleasure, last weekend, of pulling the aluminum siding off the side of the house with a screwdriver and walking down Race Street with the reclaimed siding/signage tied up with a length of rope.
Susan Parenti, core organizer and co-founder of SDaS, happened to be driving down Race Street as I was walking home in the sunshine with the panels. She cheered me.
This may or may not be "news."
It may or may not be "news," also, that Race Street is where chance encounters of pedestrians and cyclists and motorists make activism happen in Urbana town. You are invited to chew on this detail.
Regardless of what you think "news" is, I (me, Paul, the author of this...) stood in the backlot behind the flattened house this evening, May 23rd, 2004, 10:33 CST. I thought about what SDaS has seeded or pollenated or entwined its tendrils with in our town, and I tried to figure out how it happened:
A.W.A.R.E., the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort, grew out of Ladies Against War at 409 Race Street. I was making tea at the time and washing someone else's dishes.
On the Job Consulting started consulting eachother at a couple of cheap folding tables in that building which isn't there anymore. Now they are called OJC Tech, and have a lovely, high-ceilinged office on Main Street downtown.
The people who made the Urbana Independent Media Center blossom met eachother because of SDaS, while it lived at 409 North Race.
The Urbana Permaculture Project planted its first tomatoes-in-a-toilet at Race and University.
One of the co-founders of the Radical Cheerleader movement spent some time in classes at SDaS.
Cyberneticist and Tai Chi instructor Steve Sloan talked his demons down while eating Wendy's on the back patio, while the bees buzzed and the trucks rumbled past, the summer before he died.
409 North Race housed, in a single season, a theatre troupe, an economics class, a silk-screening studio, a poets' forum, a drummers' circle, and a refuge for teenagers who were convinced that they could school themselves better than the school system could--not to mention Mickey, who slept on the porch, and Chuck, who parked his van in the lot out back.
Interested community members will no doubt walk or bike or drive past the site where 409 North Race used to be, and they may ask, "What's the School going to do now?"
That is a good question. The more people asking that question, in the opinion of this journalist (a.k.a. "me"), the better.
Be sure to ask one another what you want. And then keep the conversation going by making a design which begins to meet your desires. That much--though I never learned it in school--I learned at the School. |
This work is in the public domain |
